BLACKWELL, Okla.—Hockey has been full of the word "no" for the past three months, but these may have been the most damning negative replies of all.

Fifteen miles south of the Oklahoma-Kansas border is hardly hockey country, but the apathy here surrounding the NHL lockout was staggering on Friday as the league, unable to come to terms on a new collective bargaining agreement with the NHLPA, canceled all games through the end of November.

Time and again, the question was asked: "Would you even notice if there was never NHL hockey again?"

Time and again, the reply came back: "No."

Kobe Kastle crossed the border from Kansas to get lunch. He described himself as a football and baseball fan, but likes rodeo even more. Kastle might enjoy the action of the NHL, but says that even if there wasn't a lockout, "I wouldn't be able to watch it."

As much as the NHL's television deal with NBC has helped expand hockey's reach, NBC Sports Network still lags behind ESPN both in number of households and saturation. If an American is looking for any sport to watch, odds are the first destination will be the self-proclaimed Worldwide Leader. You don't flip over to NBCSN—you seek it out.

Even when hockey is front and center, the NHL fails to captivate American audiences. This year's Stanley Cup Finals averaged just under 3 million American viewers. At least one was in Blackwell on Friday, but that did not mean the NHL made an impression.

"I saw when the Sacramento Kings won the Stanley Cup," said Barek Street, who noted that he only likes professional sports, a key distinction in an area where college football is supreme. But even for Street, the NHL makes so little of an impression, he named the wrong city as home of the league champions.

It's easy, being wrapped up in following the NHL's labor negotiations, day in and day out, to get the idea that what is happening in hockey is earth-shattering stuff that could forever alter the sports landscape of North America. It's not. What's actually happening is that a league of marginal importance to the general population is pushing itself further to the fringe.

"I don't think around here people care about the lockout," Taylor Rutledge said while gassing up her car. "I don't know many people that actually watch hockey."

This is not just a northern Oklahoma phenomenon. Over the summer, when the NHL and NHLPA were still on speaking terms, most of the negotiating sessions were at league headquarters in midtown Manhattan. Reporters would stand outside on Sixth Avenue and wait for the participants to emerge. Seeing a couple of TV cameras, passers-by would often ask what the media were waiting for. The vast majority, when told that the answer was NHL labor negotiations, would shrug and move on.

Even when Henrik Lundqvist was there, a 15-minute walk from his home rink at Madison Square Garden, the biggest hubbub that resulted would be a couple of autograph seekers, and a fan or two who wanted a picture with the Vezina Trophy winner.

New York is a long way from Blackwell, but the palpable apathy for hockey is the same in the city and country. Instead of working together to grow a game that should sell itself, the NHL and NHLPA have spent months trying to win the hearts and minds of exiting hockey fans in a public relations war that has only served to alienate everyone. Fans might have an opinion on who's right and wrong in the labor dispute, but the bottom line is that they just want to see world-class hockey.

They won't for at least a month. When they do, it is now an open question as to whether they will care enough to come back. The diehards mostly will, because they can't shake the hockey addiction. The casual fans now have reason and opportunity to check out other winter sports and possibly never return. Having to once again win back the fans lost in a lockout, the NHL can forget about Blackwell, and the thousands of small towns across America like it, for a long time.

What that means is that the NHL gets pushed further to the margins of the sports scene in this country. It is the small towns, the ones unaffiliated with pro teams, that turn pro sports into major pro sports. The proof is in Canada, where hockey is ubiquitous, or in Blackwell, where on Friday afternoon there was a man in a Yankees hat eating a burger, a woman in a Dallas Cowboys sweatshirt walking her dog in a parking lot, a teenager named Kobe, and a guy who used to like writing about hockey, just passing through on the way to cover the weekend's big college football game.